Since the .357 Magnum cartridge has been my primary thing to reload and I'm big on hunting whitetail with it, I've wondered about the various bullet options on the market. My most complete data sets are for the Remington SJHP and the Hornady XTP, both in 158 grain versions. Sierra's Sports Master jacketed soft point line up has been one of the hardest to find any sort of testing data on. I can find Hornady's XTP's just fine along with other jacketed soft points but not the Sierra stuff. Kentucky Range Time put together a good gel test on YouTube recently and found that from a rifle, the 158 grain JSP's do good. Unfortunately, the data set is incomplete. As usual, he tested with a series of shorter handgun barrels after the 20 inch rifle but the 6 inch barrel showed mid 1100 fps. The bullets did not perform well in expansion.
The 20 inch barrel showed a velocity around 1735 fps with his handloads which is fine as the expansion and penetration were around 0.6 inch and 18 inch deep. A very respectable performance though I suspect a higher velocity can be achieved. Sierra's rifle load data for H-110 stops at 16.2 grain which is odd as the handgun data shows 16.4 grains. Hodgdon has a max load of 16.7 grains of H-110 but with the Hornady XTP. The 6 inch barrel showed around 1150 fps with basically no good expansion, sadly. That tells me that these bullets aren't really useful for my needs below 1200 fps range.
What data we don't have is what these bullets will do at the 1300 fps range in gel. My reasoning for that data is the rifle's muzzle velocity for those tested handloads put the bullet at 1300 around 115 yards. If it turns out that they still get good expansion and penetration at around 1300 fps, you would have a viable 100+ yard bullet for hunting whitetail. Without that, you have to limit yourself to shorter ranges under 100 yards. That said, seeing that 1200 fps is around the 150 yard mark from a rifle, it's reasonable to assume that the Sierra 158 grain JSP bullet would work at 100 yards on whitetail from a 1700+ fps velocity. I would still like the validation of seeing the data.
This confirms what I've been finding with other tests completed with other JSP's like the Federal American Eagle or similar that JSPs are fine from rifles but should be avoided when used with a handgun for hunting and defensive applications.
KRT also had good data for the Speer Gold Dot 135 grain but overall, I'm not impressed with that bullet for these purposes. It'll probably work just fine but they seemed to break up at the higher velocities.
While looking around for more, I found data for the CCI Blazer 158 grain JHP from Buckeye Ballistics. His testing indicated that the load achieves around 19 inches of penetration at 1200 fps from a 6 inch barrel revolver though I don't know who is carrying a 6 inch double action. The bullet expanded to around 0.6 inch. They also tested with a 3 inch barrel and achieved around 1120 fps with and expansion of 0.54 inch. Penetration was measured around 17.25 inches. This is fine but I still need to find rifle data for it. I can get the velocity from my Marlin but I'm not setup for gel testing. The CCI load doesn't seem be the great choice, up-front but might be fine if that's the only option you have available.
I would eventually like to have complete data sets for the Winchester Super-X 158 grain JSP, Federal Fusion and HammerDown and finally the Remington 180 grain JHP in the Core-Lokt line. Additionally, Remington's 158 gain JSP from the HTP line, the Federal Power-Shok loads, the Herter's 158 grain JSP would also be very nice. I have some data for a few of these but nothing close to complete.
Many of those loads can be had at an inexpensive cost and I think are worth the time for a rifle hunter looking for a common load. The Remington SJHP loads are not common but offerings like the Winchester Super-X or Hornady XTP Customs are. Someone wanting to hunt with a .357 Magnum lever action might have trouble locating suitable ammo at a Big Box store. Having good options would be helpful. I also think we need to start indicating that many of these JSP loads are not going to work the way we think from a handgun. The Federal American Eagle JSP's do not have adequate expansion from a revolver from any test I have seen and should be avoided for defensive and hunting purposes. They will expand when fired from a rifle but I have never seen any indication that there were intended to be fired from a rifle on the box. My sources for that information comes from videos from the Chopping Block/News of the Pews and GunSam videos showing very poor performance.
A minimally complete data set will include rifle velocity and the lowest known velocity that a bullet will still expand and penetrate. The minimums I set for myself regarding pentation and expansion are around 0.50 inch diameter along with 17 inches of penetration for hunting applications here in the East. Usually, a good .357 Mag load will do one or the other very well but the best ones will do both and usually exceed the margins nicely. The Remington 158 gr SJHPs will do both at around 0.60 in expansion and around 18 inch worth of penetration. The 158 grain XTPs favor penetration toward the 20+ inch mark and seem to meet the 0.50 inch expansion in most instances. If I needed a defensive load for in the woods, the XTPs are probably a better choice.
As for Federal's HammerDown and Fusion, I have been able to compile the following:
HammerDown 170 gr:
Rifle - 1847 fps but another test got 1619 fps for 16 inch barrels; federal claims 1610. I've seen another publication say they got 1771 fps from an 18 inch rifle and I've seen a 20 inch barrel test claim 1864 fps. These numbers are all over the place. In this one instance, we'll take the lowest of 1610 which is factory claims.
Revolver (4 inch) - 1209 fps / 0.63 inch expansion / 19 inch of penetration (similar velocities in other tests)
If we extrapolate the data from 1610 fps with a ballistic coefficient of 0.185 and assume the low to mid 1200 fps is accurate then the maximum distance would be around 135 yards with that 1209 fps. If the velocities are higher from a rifle than what the box says, the HammerDown load is suitable for hunting whitetail much further. I put my personal "stamp of approval" on the HammerDown load from a "paper perspective".
Fusion 158 gr:
Rifle - No rifle data is available at this time
Revolver (4 inch) - 1321 fps with no expansion in one test, 1224 fps with okay expansion from another test.
Sadly, the Fusion doesn't appear to perform consistently well that I can see from a handgun but the rifle data is missing so I wouldn't write these off just yet.
One of these days, I will compile everything into a single post.
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